Sagan, Scott, Kenneth Waltz, and Richard K Betts. "A Nuclear Iran: Promoting Stability or Courting Disaster?". Journal of International Affairs, Vol.60, No.2 (2007): 135-150.

Sagan, Scott, Kenneth Waltz, and Richard K Betts. "A Nuclear Iran: Promoting Stability or Courting Disaster?". Journal of International Affairs, Vol.60, No.2 (2007): 135-150.

This article is a transcript of a debate between Scott Sagan and Kenneth Waltz, both responding to Iranian nuclearization, with Richard Betts moderating and opening remarks delivered by Lisa Anderson. Dr. Sagan's comments will appear in blue, Dr. Waltz's comments will appear in green, Prof. Betts's comments will appear in red.

• This debate is timely, taking place on 8 February 2007, because the carrier group lead by USS John C. Stennis has been recently dispatched to Iranian waters, raising the threat of a US invasion of Iran over its nuclear policy (136).
• Nuclear proliferation hasn't occurred because today only 9 countries have nuclear weapons; at such a slow pace of accumulation, it is not a significant worry if another state gets nuclear weapons for good reasons (136).
• Moreover, states with nuclear weapons always behave with caution and responsibility because of the tremendous power of those weapons (137). Deterrence applies to all situations, so a nuclear Iran is not significantly different from a nuclear USSR or nuclear China (138).
• Countries with nuclear weapons will not be attacked in ways that threaten their vital interests. Iran understands this and seeks to acquire nuclear weapons because they are the only thing that can deter American invasion, something that could never be accomplished with conventional arms (137-138).
• Nuclear weapons are controlled by imperfect and irrational people inside imperfect organizations, so there is never any guarantee about state behavior with nuclear weapons (138).
• Dr. Waltz's perspective is tainted by deterrence optimism and proliferation fatalism, a belief that the USA cannot prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons except using military force and that Iranian acquisition would not be so bad. These perspectives blind US policymakers to real concrete steps that can be taken to prevent nuclear proliferation (138).
•  Instead of comparing Iran to the USSR and China, even though they had periods of instability when control of nuclear weapons was put into the hands of irresponsible actors, this new situation should be compared to Pakistani acquisition of nuclear weapons, which made the Pakistani state more aggressive and created the risks of weapons being stolen by terrorists or sold to terrorists due to weak controls (139, 142).
• Pakistani acquisition was marked by the stability-instability paradox, by which a state becomes aggressive because it believes that MAD will prevent retaliation for conventional aggression. This convinced the Pakistani army and Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to send disgusted Pakistani soldiers into Kargil in 1998, sparking a nuclear standoff with India (139).
• The movement of Pakistani missiles into rural areas for concealment from counterforce strikes during nuclear crisis also created a vulnerability-invulnerability paradox, as securing the missiles increased their vulnerability to theft by terrorists, as demonstrated by a 1999 plan by the Pakistani ISI to stash nuclear weapons in Afghanistan (139-140).
• Pakistan also demonstrates that states are not unitary actors, meaning they cannot be expected to be responsible with nuclear weapons due to rationality as individuals with access may have different motivations. In Pakistan, this was shown by scientist A. Q. Kahn selling centrifuge and nuclear bomb designs to Libya, Iraq, Iran, and North Korea for personal profit (140-141).
• Dr. Waltz is correct that the USA will be less aggressive towards a nuclear Iran, but there is also a danger that Iran, or at least actors within the regime like the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, will behave more aggressively if has nuclear arms, potentially intensifying the crisis by attacking US military bases in the region and sponsoring terrorism (141).
• The fact that, presently, the Revolutionary Guards Corps is heavily involved in the nuclear program, guarding the existed nuclear centers and responsible for purchasing materials through its own commercial networks, bodes poorly for centralization and responsible control over the Iranian nuclear program. This presents a strong danger of nuclear proliferation and potentially terrorists obtaining the bomb from the Guards Corps (141).
• The Kargil War demonstrates the success of nuclear deterrence, as the nuclear capabilities of both sides prevented that crisis from escalating into a larger general war between India and Pakistan (142).
• Since a nuclear exchange has never occurred, this means that deterrence is a set principle that has worked for over 50 years. It is thus the realist perspective to be nuclear optimist, whereas pessimists and those who doubt deterrence deal only with hypotheticals (142).
• It does not make sense to compare the situation of the Cold War governments with modern proliferation problems, as states like Iran are not secular, stable, nor oriented towards rational material interests. They are run by religious zealots for whom physical survival is not a priority (142-143).
• The Chinese and Soviets were often unstable and unpredictable, except when it came to nuclear policy, at which point their interests were so much at stake that they became responsible actors. In this same way, Iran will be responsible with nuclear weapons, including preventing terrorists from seizing them, regardless of the religious views of its leadership (143).
• If Iran ever did acquire nuclear weapons, then the USA and other nuclear powers should take the 'clean needles' approach of providing them with technologies to safeguard those weapons and block unwanted detonation, as well as Soviet and American operational approach to effective nuclear control (143).
• American regime change objectives are incompatible with nuclear nonproliferation, as the threat of American invasion is the main driver of Iran's trying to get nuclear weapons. Any nonproliferation negotiation with Iran should be begin with abandoning regime change and promising not to use nuclear weapons against any nonnuclear state (144).
• The dangers of being coerced in this way into providing technological and economic assistance to Iran are minor compared to the dangers posed by nuclear proliferation (144).  
• Nuclear weapons can only be used for deterrence and to apply coercive pressure, although they are not particularly good at the latter. Moreover, the US presence in the Middle East means that Iranian weapons will only be useful for deterrence (144-145).
• Even under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, there are a number of states that have developed nuclear energy as a way of moving technologically closer to nuclear weapons should the security situation deteriorate. The American goal should be to get Iran to this stage where it has nuclear energy, similar to the reactors at Bushehr, but cannot easily turn this capacity into nuclear weapons (146).
• A world where nobody has nuclear weapons, but everyone has the capacity to build them is the most dangerous kind of world, since there is a strong incentive to manufacture and store nuclear weapons in secret and when one existing nuclear weapon is discovered, it creates a dangerous rush towards nuclear rearmament (146).
• Israel has not decided whether or not to resort to military force to prevent Iranian nuclearization, although this remains a possibility. Their current move has been to develop submarine-based missile systems to enhance their second strike nuclear capabilities (147).
• Saudi Arabia has moved forward to develop a stronger civilian nuclear program, but may also be pursuing military nuclear options. This is particularly true regarding Pakistan, with whom the Saudis have strong ties. Saudi Arabia may try to purchase nuclear weapons from Pakistan or it may rely on Pakistan to provide an umbrella of nuclear deterrence against Iran (147).
• Iran has been purposefully strengthening its nuclear program against the possibility of Israeli attack, dispersing materials to multiple facilities, often at undisclosed locations, and putting those facilities very close to civilian installations to increase collateral damage in the case of an Israel attack. This all means that an Israeli attack would retard the Iranian nuclear program but would be unlikely to end it entirely (149).
• Iran is suspected of developing nuclear weapons, despite claiming to only have peaceful purposes in mind, because it has not allowed IAEA officials to carry out inspects of its nuclear facilities (147).
• Under Article IV of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, all states in good standing with the Treaty are guaranteed the right to develop peaceful nuclear energy. Because they did not report the equipment and material purchased from A. Q. Kahn and have not allowed IAEA inspectors into their facilities, the Iranians are not in good standing with the Treaty and have thus forfeited the right to develop peaceful nuclear energy. The UNSC has said this right will be restored when Iran allows IAEA inspections and acknowledges its past violations (148).
• The Iranian nuclear program was initially started under the Shah and was originally shut down by Ayatollah Khomeini for being immoral. The modern Iranian nuclear program was restarted sometime in the late 1980s or early 1990s because Iran felt that if the international community had not responded to Iraqi use of chemical weapons that the international community would not protect Iran, thus necessitating nuclear weapons. This was accidentally revealed by a letter from Ayatollah Khomeini published in December 2006 by a newspaper linked to Akbar Rafsanjani to pressure President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad into ending confrontation with the West (148).
• "All states don't have a right to get nuclear weapons. They do, however, have a responsibility to keep to the treaties that they have signed. Iran has signed the Non Proliferation Treaty as a non-nuclear weapons state. Therefore, today it does not have that right unless it withdraws from the treaty. If it does, it should return all the mate rials it received as a member of good standing in the treaty (149)."
• Iran does not have to deter a conventional Israeli attack in the way that it does a conventional American attack. The USA should still be a thought of as a primary threat that Iran is trying to deter against (149).
• Iran is unlikely to adopt a strategy of ambiguity about its nuclear capabilities because it is itself unsure about whether it has a working nuclear deterrent. Like North Korea, it will need to test a number of missiles to make sure that the deterrent is effective (150).